why daylight savings time can be more trouble for teens
5 minute read
for teens, just as their bodies are maturing, their brains are also developing, which makes them very sensitive to sleep deprivation.
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is your teen a little more distant and tired than usual right now? “meh” is the only response you’re getting to anything?
losing one hour of sleep for the abrupt shift to daylight savings time can do a number on your natural body rhythm, making it harder to adjust than the fall time change. the scientific term for this rhythm is the circadian rhythm, the internal body clock for sleeping, waking and other physical and mental functions. it can be wrenched out of whack with challenges like shift work, crying babies who need night feeding, and definitely time changes.
while adults struggle with this as well—i’ve upped my caffeine for the week to compensate and treated myself to cure-all chocolate-covered almonds—teens are prone to have a particularly rough time.
how do you feel being awakened in the middle of the night?
dr. milena pavlova, mass general brigham neurologist and medical director of the clinical sleep laboratory at brigham and women’s faulkner hospital, explains it this way:
“if i wake you up at two in the morning, how would you feel?” (terrible, and later i’d be on the verge of frustration tears, depending on the demands of the day.) “let’s say you sleep between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. so, how about if i wake you up at one in the morning? well, that’s how a teenager feels.”
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she explains that teenagers are typically night owls for a reason. studies have shown that as kids mature sexually, their biological night tends to be delayed, so they might be more productive at night or have more energy than the adults in the household.
“when we talk about teenagers, we say, ‘oh, it’s just because they’re on the phone all the time, on the internet all the time, or on tiktok,” she says of late-night habits for teens. but the research confirms the science behind their circadian rhythms.
disrupted circadian rhythms come with health problems
at the beginning of their lives, infants sleep for close to 18 hours. then toddlers become difficult to wake up. so, sleep habits change, reflecting the child’s growth and development.
“the structure of sleep also evolves in terms of the brain waves,” pavlova says, adding that just as their bodies are maturing, their brains are also developing, making them very sensitive to sleep deprivation.
“sexual maturity happens on other levels in terms of anatomy as well as the secretion of different hormones. this is when that sleep delay happens in both boys and girls. when the time changes, they have to wake up even earlier during their biological night which is when the problem could be even worse.”
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worse? there’s daytime drowsiness and difficulty getting to sleep for a young person who might also be managing a packed schedule, sports activities and competition to get into university.
the fact is, sleep deprivation can contribute to other health issues, including stress, obesity, heart health and mental health disorders like depression, she says. teens can also be more at risk for seasonal depression that comes with shorter days.
“the main thing is that someone is losing an hour of sleep and they’re losing an hour of sleep at the time when they also are supposed to be having their maximum rem (rapid eye movement) sleep. this is not just randomly. rem sleep is the stage of sleep that’s primarily circadian regulated, and it tends to peak a little after the biological midnight of an individual. so, the higher amount of rem sleep is actually in the second part of the biological night.”
with daylight savings, most teens have less rem sleep and that is not a good thing.
while all sleep is important, rem sleep is critical for dreaming, memory, emotional processing and healthy brain development, notes the sleep foundation. pavlova stresses that teens can experience more negative feelings and a higher risk of depression. for parents, being aware of their teen developing a circadian rhythm disorder or experiencing the impacts of daylight savings is a good first step.
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- difficulty waking up for school in the morning
- sleepiness during the day
- struggling to keep up in school or participate in activities due to fatigue
- trouble with memory
- finding it hard to fall asleep until the early hours of the morning
- sleeping very late on the weekends
can you help your teen get better sleep? yes
how do you prevent or manage sleep disorders in teens?
pavlova recommends using your two allies: darkness in the beginning of the night and light in the morning after waking.
“allow plenty of light after they awaken, usually within an hour awakening,” she says of turning on lights in their bedroom and around the house. “do not try to wake up the person earlier. i have a lot of patients who would use 10 alarms and various things to start their awakening process an hour before they need to be awakened and suffer, but you don’t have to torture the person.”
at night, go with the candlelight level of lighting at least an hour before bed. keeping a consistent bedtime and wake-up time can help as well for weekdays and weekends (not always feasible but a good suggestion).
as for all-hours screen time, it’s problematic because screens provide more light exposure and a lot of times that light is very close to the face and has a powerful effect. try using the dark mode on devices or a setting that changes the colour of the light to the red spectrum which is the signal for evening.
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pavlova also questions the value of daylight savings when it can have such negative effects on our health.
“people say, ‘oh you know, sleep is a waste of time anyway.’” not true, as all kinds of science has confirmed, along with a myriad of rising health problems connected to sleep hygiene. “the other part actually is why do we have to do daylight savings? why do we have to start doing this at the time when it’s actually dark outside at six in the morning? it’s dark and it’s also icy.”
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